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Night Train: A Biography of Sonny Liston
'Dazzling... An unforgettable journey to some of boxing's darkest places' Steve Bunce, author of Bunce's Big Fat Short History of British Boxing
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2000
A breathtakingly brutal and evocative account of the life of infamous boxing world champion Sonny Liston
Sonny Liston is one of the most controversial men the boxing world has ever seen. He rose from a childhood of grinding poverty to become 1962's heavyweight world champion. He spent time in prison, he was known to have mob connections, he was hated and vilified by his public. And after he lost the world title to Cassius Clay in a spectacular fall from grace, he died under mysterious and never fully explained circumstances.
Sonny Liston's life story is an unsolved mystery and an underappreciated tragedy. In uncompromising detail, Nick Tosches captures the shadowy figure of Liston, this most mesmerising and enigmatic of boxing antiheroes.
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2000
A breathtakingly brutal and evocative account of the life of infamous boxing world champion Sonny Liston
Sonny Liston is one of the most controversial men the boxing world has ever seen. He rose from a childhood of grinding poverty to become 1962's heavyweight world champion. He spent time in prison, he was known to have mob connections, he was hated and vilified by his public. And after he lost the world title to Cassius Clay in a spectacular fall from grace, he died under mysterious and never fully explained circumstances.
Sonny Liston's life story is an unsolved mystery and an underappreciated tragedy. In uncompromising detail, Nick Tosches captures the shadowy figure of Liston, this most mesmerising and enigmatic of boxing antiheroes.
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First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Nick Tosches
49 books252 followersNick Tosches was an American journalist, novelist, biographer, and poet. His 1982 biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, Hellfire, was praised by Rolling Stone magazine as "the best rock and roll biography ever written."
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 26, 2023
Night Train: The Sonny Liston Story' by Nick Tosches is not always an easy read. Even Sonny Liston did not know his birthdate, or it changed often.
I was slightly disappointed by this book. Don't get me wrong, it is still an interesting read, but Tosches fails to provide new insight into the cause of his death, amongst other things, in fact the whole book is a mystery, murder case and a history of his boxing career.
But there is more to the story than boxing, Sonny Liston was not a nice man, and many of his friends were not nice people, many friends spending years in prisons.
Of course the main story is of course Liston/Clay and Liston/Ali but again these are stories that will never be told, were they fixed, yes I am sure they were especially the second, but nobody knows.
Difficult to follow as well, so many friends, managers, trainers, mafia, even brothers and sisters the whole story is vague.
Sadly there is no happy end to this story except the biggest mystery and the sadness of a World Boxing Champion dead in his home for 5 to 7 days, no visitors.
How did he die, murder, drugs, gambling, natural causes, drinking, I still don't know
Okay book.
I was slightly disappointed by this book. Don't get me wrong, it is still an interesting read, but Tosches fails to provide new insight into the cause of his death, amongst other things, in fact the whole book is a mystery, murder case and a history of his boxing career.
But there is more to the story than boxing, Sonny Liston was not a nice man, and many of his friends were not nice people, many friends spending years in prisons.
Of course the main story is of course Liston/Clay and Liston/Ali but again these are stories that will never be told, were they fixed, yes I am sure they were especially the second, but nobody knows.
Difficult to follow as well, so many friends, managers, trainers, mafia, even brothers and sisters the whole story is vague.
Sadly there is no happy end to this story except the biggest mystery and the sadness of a World Boxing Champion dead in his home for 5 to 7 days, no visitors.
How did he die, murder, drugs, gambling, natural causes, drinking, I still don't know
Okay book.
December 15, 2019
A biography of the former boxing champion, known for being a bad guy, the "phantom punch" and his mysterious death.
Sonny Liston was tough, greedy, and none too swift. After going to prison, where he learned how to box, he got in the mob, and worked his way into being world champion.
I would have liked a more thorough examination of his short film career. Other than that, a great biography.
Sonny Liston was tough, greedy, and none too swift. After going to prison, where he learned how to box, he got in the mob, and worked his way into being world champion.
I would have liked a more thorough examination of his short film career. Other than that, a great biography.
July 15, 2016
Tosches's attempt to bring a life lived in the shadows to the light is one of my absolute all-time favorite books.
While certainly not the purest form of biography -- Tosches tends to offer asides, observations, and other commentary -- the writing is, at times, beautiful; what Tosches manages to pull from the shadows is intriguing; and, the subject of the book is a curious human being.
I've returned to this book over a half dozen times since it was first published, but it had been a decade since my last reading. It's better than I remembered and I remembered it being pretty damn good.
While certainly not the purest form of biography -- Tosches tends to offer asides, observations, and other commentary -- the writing is, at times, beautiful; what Tosches manages to pull from the shadows is intriguing; and, the subject of the book is a curious human being.
I've returned to this book over a half dozen times since it was first published, but it had been a decade since my last reading. It's better than I remembered and I remembered it being pretty damn good.
November 16, 2009
Before this book I knew little of Liston: heavyweight champ, legendary build and punching ability.
So my eyes were opened wide with this tale of his textbook tough childhood, natural fighting ability and his descent into a murky world of match fixes and criminality.
The book opens, and closes, with his death, for which there are many theories, but little substantiated fact.
In between there is a far from usual biography, doubt prevails over his actual birthdate, his injuries throughout his career, who got what from his earnings, in fact there is little that can be 100% verified.
This makes for a frustrating but facsintaing tale, and it deals with a time where the underworld ruled such areas of life with almost impunity.
It desn't portray Liston as a perfect character, far from it: the man was brutal and nasty, yet apparently loved kids.
Excellent read, and great commentary on a troubled individual who history will find it hard to pigeonhole.
So my eyes were opened wide with this tale of his textbook tough childhood, natural fighting ability and his descent into a murky world of match fixes and criminality.
The book opens, and closes, with his death, for which there are many theories, but little substantiated fact.
In between there is a far from usual biography, doubt prevails over his actual birthdate, his injuries throughout his career, who got what from his earnings, in fact there is little that can be 100% verified.
This makes for a frustrating but facsintaing tale, and it deals with a time where the underworld ruled such areas of life with almost impunity.
It desn't portray Liston as a perfect character, far from it: the man was brutal and nasty, yet apparently loved kids.
Excellent read, and great commentary on a troubled individual who history will find it hard to pigeonhole.
October 24, 2016
Truly remarkable: a book about a boxer that really isn't about boxing. First book I've read by Nick Tosches and he writes very well. Quite a tragic figure was Sonny Liston ... perhaps the saddest is that while he ended up (albeit briefly) one of the most people on the planet, no-one knows what day he was born, or the day he departed.
June 2, 2009
Good bio, not as good as his bio of Dean Martin though.
June 23, 2015
One of the best boxing bios I've read. A real interesting tragic story of a champion whose infamy overshadows his triumphs.
October 10, 2026
This is a biography of Sonny Liston, the heavy weight champion of the world from 1962 until the fighter known at that time as Cassius Clay beat him in 1964. It is not really a boxing book. Most of Liston's bouts get described in a couple of lines. There is no real discussion of his boxing style other than to repeat that he had a powerful knockout punch.
There is also not a real profile of Liston as a man. This is not Tosches' fault. Liston was a private self-contained guy. He clearly had anger and rage bubbling all the time. He doesn't appear to have really confided with anyone. He scared people but he did not let people know him.
This is a brilliant story about the world that Sonny Liston lived in. He was born on a sharecropping farm in Arkansas. His father beat him hard enough to leave permanent scars on his back. He moved to St. Louis as a teenager. He committed muggings and armed robberies. He was caught and sentenced to five years in the Missouri State Penitentiary.
He learned to box in prison. It was obvious that he was a brutal unstoppable fighter. He raised through the ranks and eventually became the number one contender. He beat Floyd Patterson for the championship, which he held until losing to Clay.
He continued boxing after losing the title. He was found dead in 1971 from either a heart attack, a drug overdose or murder.
Tosches is fascinated by the mobsters, conmen and crooks who surrounded Liston. Boxing was a mob controlled crooked industry in the 1950s. As soon as it became clear that Liston had talent, his management got taken over by mob related guys. Tosches uses wiretap transcripts, congressional testimony and trial transcripts to give a sense of the deals and double crosses.
Fixed fights were an open secret. The wise guys made huge pay days by betting on fixed fights. It seems very likely that Liston threw his first fight with Ali, and it is obvious that he tanked in the second fight. One of the running gags in the book is the Congressional investigations that are always a couple of years behind what is happening.
Tosches at times has an overheated preachy writing style. "Born with deadman's eyes, he passed from the darkness of those scars on his back to the darkness of the criminal underworld, to the darkness beyond, a darkness whose final form was the last things his eyes ever saw." He also has a good, tough guy voice he uses. "Boozers make bad boxers." or "Nobody ever saw Sonny Liston in a fucking dashiki." or "Liston fucked with no one in Jeff City (Penitentiary) and no one fucked with him. "I didn't mind prison he later said."
Liston was not popular with the civil rights community or black leaders. He had a long criminal record. He was crude. He was a poor public speaker. He was no Joe Louis. Liston visited Vice President Johnson in his official office. "After a few minutes in the vice president's company, Sonny grew listless, turned to Bentley (his PR guy) and said, "let's blow this bum off."
Sonny Liston lived a tough squalid life. He had a short run at the top and then toppled back. This is a sad story and Tosches tells it well. He left me with the impression that, given his early life and given the crooked world of 1950s boxing, there was never a chance of it ending any other way.
(This was originally published in the US in 2000 under the title "The Devil and Sonny Liston". I read a copy published in England with "Night Train-The Sonny Liston Story" as the title. I like the original American title better.)
There is also not a real profile of Liston as a man. This is not Tosches' fault. Liston was a private self-contained guy. He clearly had anger and rage bubbling all the time. He doesn't appear to have really confided with anyone. He scared people but he did not let people know him.
This is a brilliant story about the world that Sonny Liston lived in. He was born on a sharecropping farm in Arkansas. His father beat him hard enough to leave permanent scars on his back. He moved to St. Louis as a teenager. He committed muggings and armed robberies. He was caught and sentenced to five years in the Missouri State Penitentiary.
He learned to box in prison. It was obvious that he was a brutal unstoppable fighter. He raised through the ranks and eventually became the number one contender. He beat Floyd Patterson for the championship, which he held until losing to Clay.
He continued boxing after losing the title. He was found dead in 1971 from either a heart attack, a drug overdose or murder.
Tosches is fascinated by the mobsters, conmen and crooks who surrounded Liston. Boxing was a mob controlled crooked industry in the 1950s. As soon as it became clear that Liston had talent, his management got taken over by mob related guys. Tosches uses wiretap transcripts, congressional testimony and trial transcripts to give a sense of the deals and double crosses.
Fixed fights were an open secret. The wise guys made huge pay days by betting on fixed fights. It seems very likely that Liston threw his first fight with Ali, and it is obvious that he tanked in the second fight. One of the running gags in the book is the Congressional investigations that are always a couple of years behind what is happening.
Tosches at times has an overheated preachy writing style. "Born with deadman's eyes, he passed from the darkness of those scars on his back to the darkness of the criminal underworld, to the darkness beyond, a darkness whose final form was the last things his eyes ever saw." He also has a good, tough guy voice he uses. "Boozers make bad boxers." or "Nobody ever saw Sonny Liston in a fucking dashiki." or "Liston fucked with no one in Jeff City (Penitentiary) and no one fucked with him. "I didn't mind prison he later said."
Liston was not popular with the civil rights community or black leaders. He had a long criminal record. He was crude. He was a poor public speaker. He was no Joe Louis. Liston visited Vice President Johnson in his official office. "After a few minutes in the vice president's company, Sonny grew listless, turned to Bentley (his PR guy) and said, "let's blow this bum off."
Sonny Liston lived a tough squalid life. He had a short run at the top and then toppled back. This is a sad story and Tosches tells it well. He left me with the impression that, given his early life and given the crooked world of 1950s boxing, there was never a chance of it ending any other way.
(This was originally published in the US in 2000 under the title "The Devil and Sonny Liston". I read a copy published in England with "Night Train-The Sonny Liston Story" as the title. I like the original American title better.)
July 3, 2021
A tale from the dark side of boxing. The details of Liston's life has always been a bit of a mystery and this book attempts to unravel this. It does this to a certain extent but still leaves many questions hanging.
September 15, 2019
Ok book, not really my cup of tea.
March 24, 2021
Should have called it Slow Train
September 6, 2021
Une belle histoire noyée sous une nuée de détails non essentiels rendant le récit presque encyclopédique et par conséquent indigeste.
February 14, 2018
This kind of biography of Sonny Liston, the heavyweight world champion previous to Mohamed Ali (alias Cassius Clay), is an easy reading one. Though the mistery around the death of this sort of bad gorilla or good one, depending on how you take it, was something never cleared. And I read it a bit because of that, for the guy was definitely not an interesting one. And that I knew. If something I've clear, after having read this, is that Liston was possibly more a victim than the thug or /and lately, a drug dealer. He was a victim of his own ignorance, to start with. The colossus we all know who had that powerful weapon that was his left arm, was quite a defenceless child in his most inner side. The sort of star journalist Nick Toshes is does a good job with this book in what maintaining the interest refers. He tell us many things, but fails in explaining what happened with Liston death. Lacking a best explanation, he surrenders to the Police official version. About the rest, everything is clear. Good but..up to boxing fans to decide.
April 20, 2012
Biographie du champion poids lourd Sonny Liston. Belle traversée des US ségrégationniste et mafieuse sur fond de boxe. Un peu plus de mal avec l'écriture que j'ai trouvé souvent trop factuelle sans trop savoir où l'auteur voulait en venir.
March 16, 2021
So so
This book doesn’t give much insight into the man himself. It seems from this book that nobody actually knew much at all about Sonny.
This book doesn’t give much insight into the man himself. It seems from this book that nobody actually knew much at all about Sonny.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews